Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Oscillating Forest (2023)

Paul Briggs - guitar
Luke Pollard - bass
Gracie Smith - drums
Ron Pollard - piano & synth

Tangled Thoughts of Leaving is an instrumental band from Western Australia.

Over the course of three full length albums - Deaden the Fields (2011), Yield to Despair (2015) and No Tether (2018) - and a handful of EPs, TToL have been chasing what is at the edge of conventional sound, combining purposeful long-form composition with more wild, anarchic improvisation & noise sections. While genre labels like doom-jazz, post-rock, prog and post-metal have been placed on the band from the outside, creating new sounds has never been an exercise in genre for TToL - but more simply the amalgamation of what happens when the four members meet to create, always seeking to drive emotional reaction.

In August 2023, TToL will release their fourth full-length studio album, Oscillating Forest.

While building up worlds of sound only to eventually tear them down and destroy them has long been a staple of the TToL live show, it was never pushed to the limit on record like it is on Oscillating Forest. The combination of newest members Gracie Smith and Paul Briggs with founding members Ron Pollard and Luke Pollard has reset the energy and drive of the

band - both in the sound they are interested in creating together and how they seek to present that sound to the world.

Inspired by the sounds, intensity, emotion and life-cycles of the bush of the south-west of Australia, Oscillating Forest is a reconstruction of the harsh and varied landscape in audio form. As with the sounds and seasons of nature, the textures and tones captured here oscillate, pulse and modulate in a way that is not linear, predictable or safe; Tangled Thoughts of Leaving guides the listener through a terrain where danger and beauty are found and contrasted around every turn.

Tangled Thoughts of Leaving composed the album in the mould of an hour-long live set - a free flowing piece of music, ignoring the constraints of standalone songs and traditional structures. Instead, each track is complementary to what comes before and after it, a constant transfer of searing energy and emotion, a cycle of constantly building and destroying itself.

TToL recorded Oscillating Forest in 2021 and 2022 at Studio Sleepwalker’s Dread in North Dandalup, Western Australia. This was a period of intense inspiration for the band, the first album written with Gracie Smith on drums - and second with Paul Briggs on guitar. There is a telling shift in energy and dynamics captured here - the chemistry and cohesion between Smith, Briggs and founding members Ron Pollard and Luke Pollard presented the opportunity to push further down the path of improvisation than previously captured on other Tangled records. Large swathes of the album were recorded live, with sections of improvisation punctuated by more purposefully layered movements.

The artwork by South African artist Caitlin Mkhasibe further explores these themes of chaotic energy and space in the form of a conceptual view of Oscillating Forest, marked in map form. The lines, contours, terrains, textures, detail and intersections of trails echo the intertwining tracks of the record.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Sudden Peril (3:41)
1.02 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Ghost Albatross (8:28)
1.03 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Twin Snakes in the Curvature (9:53)
1.04 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Seep Into (1:51)
1.05 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Lake Orb Altar (6:00)
1.06 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Trinket Forest (3:14)
1.07 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Lamprey Strings (3:18)
1.08 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Bush Wallaby (4:11)
1.09 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Folded Into (6:10)
1.10 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - The Mantle (3:33)
1.11 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving - Oscillating Forest (11:16)